De Witte en de Zwarte Baby [The White and the Black Baby]

(Dutch Language Children's Books) DE WITTE EN DE ZWARTE BABY [THE WHITE AND THE BLACK BABY] by J. T. Heins; illustrated by AJO, pseudonym of Henriette Jacoba Elizabeth Helena Fox-Borel. Alkmaar: Gebr. Kluitman, [1920]. FIRST EDITION. Oblong 8vo - 6-3/8" x 8-3/8". White cloth backed color pictorial paper covered boards with minor wear to the corners, along with slight toning and a couple spots of foxing to the plain white back cover for what is a lovely copy of the book, worth the price of admission for the front cover illustration alone which features portraits of the four main characters in the story. Plain endpapers with spotting to front and rear free endpapers. [20] pp. with age-tanning to pp. [1, 20]. This is a sweet Dutch language story, told in verse, with nine highly-stylized full page framed illustrations by AJO done in black, light brown, green and white, in which a cute little black baby boy, that is unfortunately referred to with a word that translates to a jarring and unacceptable racist term, won't stop crying. His big brother rushes into action by grabbing a cute, happy white baby girl to take to his little brother. This trick works, the little brother stops crying and is happy with his little white playmate, unfortunately, the little white baby now starts crying. Her big sister arrives and puts both babies into a little cart and pulls them along for a ride. The babies are both happy with this arrangement and share a sweet kiss! The book finishes on a high note with both babies riding on the back of an elephant. "But an elephant is wild by nature; therefore brother holds him by his tail." Internally in lovely condition with a small unobtrusive area of spotting to lower fore edge corners of pp. [18-19]. The condition of the book is VERY GOOD +. RARE # 001119